Year of live-in dangerously

Salaam Namaste
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Preity Zinta,
Ness Wadia
Direction: Siddharth Raj Anand
Rating: ***

Visibly at least, there's no feast. He's a chef of chicken makhani at a restaurant in Melbourne where no one eats. Lonely are the carrots-'n'-beets. And she's on the deejaypath, hosting a songless radio show. Yo?

Well, in favour of  Salaam Namaste, directed by first-timer Siddharth Raj Anand, it has to be whooped rightaway that the fun-'n'-fiddlesticks for the first hour or so, aren't exactly dour. Grin, no glower. In keeping with the Yashraj Film factory products, the boy-mates-girl rigmarole, is as dandy as ice candy, the visual design is uber glossy and the plot till the intermission point, is fabulously frothy.

Yaani ki yenjoy? Ya, ya, why not? It seems that the aforecited deejay (Preity Zinta) and the chicken man (Saif Ali Khan) have dodged their old-fashioned parents in India to pursue unconventional careers down under.

For starters, the two youngish yeah-yeahs quarrel like kids over a lollipop. For the main course, they move into an elegantly upholstered villa (thanks Sharmishtha Roy) in order to conduct..gasp..a platonic live-in relationship. What to do? Such saintly abstinences happens in our Juhu-Vile Parle cinema only.

Hey, bite your tongue already. For dessert, Chickenwalla and Deejay quit playing priestly. Thunder and lightning, they do some serious lip-rubbing, look as if they've scaled the Kilimanjaro peaks. Alas from this juncture, the script creeeeaks. Just before the intermission lights come on, it's announced..tantaraa..that our radio girl is PREGNANT! Kya Kehna really.

If you don't sprint out of the multiplex halfway through, it's partly because it's raining Labradors outside. And it's partly because you've grown accustomed to suffering through confused resolutions of the pregnancy..er..issue. The boy doesn't want the kids (twins comin' up!), the girl  grows a tummy which looks like the biggest brass degchi buyable in Australia. Next: they bicker, bicker, bicker, bicker, bicker, till you are sicker that the tu tu main twosome.

Quite clearly, this is a picture that's polarised between the terrific and the tedious. Often wacky on its own terms (the Crocodile Dundee take-off by Javed Jaffri is worth the price of a ticket alone), obviously the director and his writers can't sustain the shenanigans.

Bereft of fresh ingredients, they throw in far too many borrowed potato wedges from Hollywood's Fools Rush In (the sonography image which melts the recalcitrant pa-to-be's heart) and Nine Months (the mega-irritating finale, with the ever sporting Abhishek Bachchan breaking into a bumbling doctor act, originally done by Robin Williams).

Moreover, what was that pregnant duet on the streets of Melbourne? Embarrassing. As for Salim-Suleiman's background music score, would someone beg them to desist from announcing whether a scene is going to be happy or sad before it starts? Ear rankling.

If at the end of it all, you still tell yourself that the glossfest was okay, it had its sparkling moments, it's largely because on occasion, Raj Anand's direction is quite tongue-in-chic. Vishal-Shekhar's music score is remarkable for the cool title song. In addition, Sunil Patel's cinematography makes super use of  natural lighting in the picture postcard pretty locations.

Of the cast, a one-shot cameo by Ness Wadia seated debonairly in a bus, is a shocker. Sensational Debut Award aspirant or what?

Wah! Arshad Warsi, as the chef's buddy, is reliably likeable. But who on earth was that red-haired Owwwstralian impersonating a female Woody Woodpecker?

Preity Zinta is peppy and spontaneous. Expectedly, Salaam Namaste is unthinkable without Saif Ali Khan. He rescues several untidily written scenes with his neat wit and that flustered how-did-I-get-into-this-soup? facial expression.

Yeah, so what the hell! Go ahead for a Saif landing.